Kaity came to visit!

Kaity and Lyla came to visit us! Having them both in my home was a dream come true. It was so hard to move away right before Lyla was born and not be able to see her or see Kaity with her sweet baby. My favorite thing is even though its been almost a year since Kaity and I have seen each other we hardly missed a beat. She is amazing and we had a good time together. 

We ate a lot of food. There were so many amazing places I wanted to take her while she was here and we didn't even make it to a fraction of the places. 

She got in on a Friday afternoon. Saturday we headed to the Gilbert Farmers Market. That was a lot of fun. And the perfect weather! Saturday night was the Women's broadcast and it was amazing. We went out to Pei Wei with My mom, lacee and lace's friends and their moms. So yummy! Sunday was church... at 2:00. That is never fun. Monday we went out to breakfast at Kneaders and that afternoon Kaity and I went out shopping. Tuesday we did a really fun photoshoot with Kaity and Lyla and dinner at Tia Rosas. Wednesday morning we went out to the Hen House Cafe. We had never been there before, but we had always heard good things about it. I had seen their famous massive buttermilk pancake. It was seriously huge and so good! Then we dropped Kaity and Lyla off at the airport. It was such a good visit! Hopefully we get to see them again very soon! 

The girls were obsessed with Lyla. They just wanted to hug her, touch her and hold her. She was so patient with them. Such a sweet, good natured baby!

She was giving me the cutest kisses! I was head over heels in love with her. 

Playing with blocks at the farmers market. Abby is bossing Jane around. 

Tia Rosas! 

Hen House Cafe, seriously look at the pancake! 

So many fun memories!! Come back soon Kaity and Lyla! 

Spring Break

We had the funnest trip to San Diego over spring break! The girls were fantastic on the drive over there and back. They really are great travelers. We stayed at the Welk resort in Escondido. Seriously so fun! We got in Sunday afternoon and got settled in. 

Monday morning I got up early for a quick run and a workout. Juliet woke up pretty early telling me her ear hurt again! Luckily Kyle is a doctor so he was able to call her in a prescription and we gave her some tylenol. A few hours later she was fine! We headed to the San Diego zoo that morning. It was the coolest zoo. We saw so many animals doing so many cool things. We saw Panda bears and Koala bears! I've always wanted to see those. The elephants were so cool. The Lions were actually awake. I don't know if I've ever seen lions awake. Ha ha! The Jaguar was growling at us through the glass window. That thing was huge! The polar bear was swimming all over and doing lots of tricks. We walked all over for over half the day and only saw a fraction of the zoo! The hills in that zoo were killer. We had the double stroller with all these kids and people kept laughing at us. We were quite the site. We had a blast though. 

That afternoon we headed back to the resort and went swimming. Dinner at a yummy pizza place and then passing out early for a good nights sleep. 

The next day we went to the beach! The girls first time seeing and playing in the ocean. We went to the Oceanside beach. It was really fun! It was pretty rocky and the ocean was freezing. But we let the waves chase us and got our feet wet. We build some awesome sand castles which was fun. Jane was obsessed with the seagulls. She chased them all over the place. 

After a picnic lunch on the beach we walked all the way down the pier where Jane was only happy if she was freaking us out walking way to close to edge where the slats in the fence were a little to wide for our liking. 

Then it was back to the resort for more swimming. We relaxed in the room for a bit and then headed down to La Jolla to see the sea lions and get some dinner. That part of the trip was a nightmare. The traffic was horrific! Once we got down there the sea lions were really cool, but seriously stinky. We were all soon hungry. We walked up to restaurants to find something to eat, but everything was too fancy for us. The one we had looked up and planned to eat at was closed down! So we hopped back in the car and fought more traffic and ended up eating at a Rubios right by the temple. We all felt a lot better after we ate. 

We went and walked around the temple grounds and then headed back to Escondido. It was a long night but it ended up a good memory. 

We woke up Wednesday morning, packed up and headed home. I was really not feeling well. I got like a little touch of the stomach flu. It made the drive a little miserable. Luckily it went pretty fast. I felt a lot better after I took a little nap in the car. The girls were great again. The best was when we were coming up on a rest stop and we asked if anyone needed to go potty. No answer. As we are just passing the exit Juliet yells "I need to go potty". Between Arizona and California there aren't a lot of options. She said she would hold it and then peed her pants before we got to the next rest stop. Poor thing. So it was a miserable drive for her. 

We made it home safely and we made some fantastic memories. Next time we go we won't leave the resort ever. We spent a lot of time in the car and all the girls wanted to do was swim at the resort. It was a really cool pool. It has a huge water slide and a splash pad. Super fun. Its just fun to be together with no distractions. I love being able to help my girls make these special memories. Its the best part of being a parent. Being able to give them a childhood is so amazing. I really treasure it and I hope when they look back on these things they have happy memories. 

Its a exhausting to be a fun parent though. Kyle and I decided we need to take a long break from it. 

Lunch at the zoo

Abby said "take a picture"

These hills! So crazy! 

Poor Jane, Napping in the carseat isn't easy.

the wild flowers were out of control! So beautiful! 

The ocean was so fun! I love the sand and the waves. We loved watching all the surfers out there. 

we had sand all over the place. 

all the seagulls gathered around when we started eating

she was seriously obsessed 

I love this family of mine! 

Excuse the watermark, I'm not paying $25 for this one image. But if you look close look at Jane. Every time I see it, I laugh and laugh. 

The view from our balcony! So gorgeous! 

Juliet wanted to see those elephants so bad. She kept pulling out the map to make sure we were moving in the right directions. When we asked her what her favorite part was she kept saying "my elephants". 

Jane must climb all the things. All. the. time.

the girls waited all day for some cotton candy. Its the small things. 

Getting ready to go to the beach! 

La Jolla

Half Marathon numero seis

I ran the Phoenix half marathon! It was my 6th! And I finally got the PR I've been dreaming of. I broke two hours. 1:58:56 was my official time. I wasn't sure how this race was going to go. I wanted to just relax, trust my training and have no pressure to do anything amazing. I think taking that pressure off of myself made the biggest difference. I wanted to do well, but no pressure to PR.

The night before was super low key. We got to bed a bit later than I wanted to. We dropped the girls off at my parents house because Friday night because I had to leave at 4:15 in the morning and Kyle was working Saturday morning. So we came home and got in bed around 10. As soon as we got in bed, the fire alarm in our room started beeping! Kyle was nice and changed out the batteries. 20 minutes later it started beeping again!! So kyle just took it off. Then about 20 minutes later it started beeping again!! So kyle took it and hid it under a bunch of towels. So I definitely got to sleep later than I meant to but I woke up ready to go! I got ready, got some toast and water and ran over to Wendy's to meet up and head to the starting line.

We got stuck in horrible traffic trying to park. We were happy we left when we did. We were also happy that the Californian was driving. Wendy was awesome handling the traffic and getting us there a little faster. It was SOOOOOO cold at the starting line.  Like in the 30s. We were all huddled around heaters with hundreds of other people. Luckily it went by fast and before I knew it was time for the national anthem. They even let off some fireworks! We took our time getting over to the starting line so that we didn't have to fight all of the people. But there were so many people! As we started running we had to weave through a lot.

I felt like the tin man as we started running. My whole body was so stiff. As we kept going it got better, but my fingers didn't thaw out until at least mile 10! I was really watching my pace those first few miles to make sure we were staying around a 9 - 9:20 minutes mile. Last time we were running an 8:30 the first 4 miles and then we died. So I wanted to stay at a more even pace. Then my GPS went way off and said I was going way faster and father than I actually was. So then I had no idea what our pace or distance was. We really evened out and just kept talking and keeping each other going. The first 7 miles flew by! It was crazy. We were just having the best time.

About 9 miles we all started splitting up. I didn't run with water so I had to keep going through the water stations and it kept getting harder and harder to catch up with them. I finally caught back up with Lindsey and Wendy around 10.5 miles. I started realizing that if we didn't slow down at all that we would beat 2 hours! That really kept me going. When we passed the 11 miles marker I tried picking up the pace. It was hard, but I just kept going! Finally we saw the circle K where I knew we would be turning. Then it was down hill to the light where we turned to the finish line. Lindsey and I were together all the way to the end. Her energy was contagious. She was so excited and it kept me positive and motivated. Then I saw my dad with Abby and Jules and I was so excited!! It was so fun to see them. We crossed the finish line and the time on the clock said 2 hours and 2 minutes. I knew we had waited a few minutes after the gun went off to cross the starting line so I was so curious to know what our actual time was! I was dreading finding out that we had only gotten over 2 hours by something like 10 seconds.

I went through the corral pretty fast. I got my kneaders french toast (seriously better become a tradition at the end of that race! It was so good!) I met up with my dad and the girls. They were so cold so we left pretty fast. We stopped at "Hurts donut" and got some yummy donuts! Kyle left me a message asking if I saw my official time. I called him right back and he told me they had sent him a message when I crossed with the official time. 1:58:56!!!!!! I was so happy! It was perfect! It was amazing to think I had finally reached that goal.

For years and years I didn't think I would ever be able to run faster than a 10 minute mile. And I averaged a 9:10 minute mile in this race!! How incredible is that? I'm working my way into the 8 minute mile. I did take a crazy amount of time to recover from this race. I had some knee problems but I have been feeling much better and am ready to jump back in and hit it hard again.

I am so grateful for these amazing women that ran with me that day and the ones that ran with us through all our training. I am so grateful. I'm also so grateful for Kyle. He is so supportive of these races. He sacrifices a lot so that I can run and so that I can do what I need to do. He is so proud of me and makes me feel amazing. I could do it without him. Reaching these goals has been incredible. Its really exciting to start making some new goals!

I got all my medals out that afternoon. I felt super cool! 

That night we went out and got sushi to celebrate my awesomeness. It was a really good day.